The Labyrinth
by venusianeye
Summary: Itachi almost looked forward to grief - like so many disillusioned geniuses, he thirsted for novelty.  Itachi/Shisui; dark; originally titled 'the game'.  Romantic if you squint.


_Love is the bone and sinew of my curse._

* * *

The first time Uchiha Itachi met his venerable ancestor Madara was an afternoon in late winter. The ice on the Nakano's tributary, the Nehanagawa, had frozen black, brackish and strange as it ran through the miserable trees and the ice-laden forest brush that swooned downwards, at times low enough for icicles to puddle like tears against the ground. There was no wind, only the faintest suggestion of something rattling the petrified treetops - the breaking of delicate glass. Apart from that suggestion of sound, it was as though he had been locked in an empty butcher's locker. Nothing disturbed the air.

Itachi was already considered a prodigy, yes, even at that young age; his mother did not understand him, no one his age understood him, they were all afraid of him. The degree to which he could be considered a genius was so staggering that it had set an impossible gulf between him and the rest of the world. He didn't mind. He was not particularly attached to the world, and had not yet learned to be sentimental.

The temperature hovered above freezing and so he had gone out without a coat, his naked arms like bared bones under the ashen clouds. Would it snow? He thought it would, there was a certain cloying shift in barometric pressure that made it feel as though the sky were a midden of soiled grey cotton and it was all stuffed into his crowded skull. He was not a moody child, but because of the weighty atmosphere he itched for some sort of catharsis, imagined the snow would hit his skin and somehow cure his headache.

Konoha and its machinations were easy to understand; they were created and perpetuated by humans, creatures he barely acknowledged as his kind and who did not count him among their number. Nature was more alien, and thus appealing; his brain relentlessly sought to understand, he could not prevent this, and so he was a child starved for mystery.

The chakra of Madara was as subtle as the whispering branches, but when Itachi noticed it it seemed to wind against the brittle charcoal trunks like a noose, and he turned in his boots to see _him_ hanging down like a carcass on a hook: immobile, dusted with frost.

What should he do? Who would hear him scream? The snare tightened.

"You're Itachi-kun, aren't you," said the voice behind the mask. The horrid, batlike shape of him shifted. Itachi felt abruptly chilled, and wished he had worn something to ward off - _evil - _the cold. "Wandering alone and unsupervised, I see. Arrogance was a flaw of mine, too, before I became a god."

"How -" Itachi began. _How did you sneak up on me. How are you doing that with your chakra. _But he was interrupted.

"Our clan is the greatest in the world, Itachi. And of our number only the best can turn into devils." Itachi noticed the switch; the stranger did not seem to realize his slip. "You understand, don't you, that life is a game - to be played well?"

"... Who are you?"

"You don't want to die, of course," the horrible man said, thoughtfully. "No, we can't have that."

He reached a black gloved hand to the edge of his mask, and began to pull at the edge -

That evening, a hugely pregnant Mikoto saw Itachi stumble into their yard with pinwheels for eyes, the first dark comma of the Sharingan swimming in the red iris. She alerted Fugaku, who was still at police headquarters, with a messenger bird. She then fetched a medic.

Itachi was delirious with pain for two days; no one could remember their Sharingan giving them so much trouble, and it was suggested by certain members of the clan that it had awakened prematurely. Mikoto ignored these murmurs as she ignored the speculation of other jealous mothers: Itachi was an exceptional child, a gem, there could be nothing wrong with him and he could do no wrong.

Three weeks later the incident was forgotten and Sasuke was born; and some months later, the Fox attacked. In the aftermath, the enemies of Konoha prudently elected to invade.

Thus, although the war had barely been over for long enough that Konoha had any resources to waste, a six-month skirmish occurred. Fugaku was re-assigned to the active militia once more, and Itachi - by virtue of his eyes and having passed his graduation exams with ease - found himself drenched in blood in the defense of his home. He had lived in the shadow of war for his early childhood, and now he was a participant.

It was only after witnessing how easily humans may die and observing his infant brother's first, fumbling moments of life that Itachi realized he cared for anything. Tragically, the carnage had also robbed him of a certain emotional curiosity: before the war he cared for Konoha and his nuclear family, and after the war he had become intimate with the terror of loss. He saw no reason to expand the set.

Vague memories of the black-clad stranger resurfaced like bubbles through deliberately muddied water, as time flowed onwards and his mind cleared. Itachi suspected him to be responsible for the Nine-Tails' attack and the death of the Yondaime Hokage. He had heard rumors among sentries, had sifted through propaganda from the Council, had stolen a few scrolls from the clan's private histories, and gradually pieced together an understanding of events. The clouded nature of his recollections was in itself a tip-off.

When the emergency militia was formally discharged to their peacetime occupations Itachi hoped that he might never run into Madara again. It was just so statistically unlikely for someone so catastrophic to happen to him _twice_.

Statistics, of course, do not take into account the meddling of a diabolical god.

* * *

In Itachi's dreams the sky was a permanent hazy red, bruised by dark clouds. He became something of an insomniac. The days rolled in and out of his notice like ripples breaking against the shore, and he was a placid creature, disturbed by nothing and by nothing rattled. He ascended at a pace he found lazy, but which seemed to startle others. He didn't mind. He loved his family. He loved Konoha, with its rust-colored leaves and poppies in flowerpots, its terracotta roofs and winding narrow streets.

The next two black dots of the Sharingan rolled into his eyes as easily as breathing. He floated on this achievement like a single perfect leaf floats on the breeze.

He trained diligently and successfully completed, on average, one mission every two days, memorizing an ink stained copy of the Sage's _Compendium of Useful Jutsu_ on sleepless nights. (He hung two mirrors and watched his own fingers dance in order to burn the techniques into the Sharingan.)

The other children of the war had seen him kill, seen him rip men three times his size to shreds, seen his red eyes stare over the battlements as he observed the invisible. He had a military stipend and received pay for missions; he had co-workers, and fellows, but no friends. He was a prepubescent veteran.

Crows began to follow him. One at first, and then three, and then a little murder of thirteen. Mikoto was quietly disturbed by them, but said nothing.

One crisp autumn afternoon, as he taught Sasuke to trace the kanji for _kuroi_ and _shiroi_ in the dust of the yard, Itachi glanced up to see that the sky bled crimson.

"We meet again," Madara said, coalescing from the crows, perching on the fence.

Itachi whispered _kai_, hands slipping into the mudra to dispel genjutsu. It had no effect. Sasuke was frozen like a painting in the act of pointing at the dirt; the evening wind had bent his mother's poppies and they were not righting themselves. It was not an illusion.

Itachi thought that if Madara was going to kill him, he would have done it already. (He was wrong, in the end. Madara had many ways of killing people.) He stepped in front of Sasuke's helpless kneeling body and prepared to battle omnipotence.

"... Well, aren't you domestic." The voice oozed out from behind the mask - different, this time, a caricatured Noh villain. "I would go so far as to call you complacent. For shame, Itachi. Have you no _ambition?"_

"Get out of here," Itachi said, intending to yell - it came out a cracked whimper, the red sky had laid its terror on him. _"Stop it. Get away from me." _The sun was a single black pupil. (_Whose eye?)_

"Let's make this interesting," Madara said. "There's a shrine with loose floorboards in this shabby little complex. Exhume those secrets, my child, and see that you grow stronger. Much stronger. I was very clear in my dictation, the directions of the scroll are simple.

"If you don't, well. Perhaps I'll raze Konoha to the ground."

_And the sky blinked._

"...That seems fair," Madara concluded. "After all, it would inconvenience me terribly if you were to refuse. I have plans for you - and it's an eye for an eye, Itachi."

There was a ripping noise like an explosion tearing apart the earth -

And then the world was right again, and Sasuke stared at him in open-mouthed confusion. "Nii-san, how did you get over there?"

Itachi wanted to tell him _it's nothing, it's just a trick, I'll show you someday._ The lie caught on his tongue as he bit back a scream: the birds, the crows, their bodies were split here and there like smashed fruit and they struggled, eyes bulging, in the bloodstained dust, unable even to croak. Like a battlefield.

Something like ambition woke in Itachi's soul then, and he sent Sasuke for rags and splints.

Painstakingly, he began to mend what Madara had broken. In the end - before he collapsed under the chakra drain of their hungry lives - he saved seven, and they became his mute summons.

He found he could not speak of what Madara had done to him. War had encouraged a certain self-reliance in Itachi; he was untroubled that he was facing off against a demon far more terrible than the tailed beasts. He had never considered any of his fellow soldiers or citizens to be his peer.

The scroll, once he found it after a few weeks of searching, revealed the miserable secrets of the Uchiha clan. Fugaku's strange mixture of relief and apathy at Sasuke's birth - _it is good to have two sons, the Uchiha come in pairs_ - was at last made comprehensible. It was only natural, Itachi supposed, a sense of betrayal coiling around his stomach, to avoid growing attached to the back-up. The eye donor.

He realized then that he cherished his little brother. In a quiet, murderous way, it enraged him to think of Sasuke coming to harm; Itachi stood alone against the world and kept Sasuke concealed in the safety of his shadow.

_To attain the Mangekyou Sharingan you must kill your most important person_, the scroll proclaimed.

Itachi subsequently realized his dilemma.

* * *

"Who is your most important person?" Itachi asked a teammate - he could not recall their name - as he stood over the corpses of three pathetic assassins who had been hired to kill the daimyo of the land of Fire.

"Itachi-san," she said, glaring at him, "this is _so_ not the time for you to grow a sex drive, okay? Kinda fucking gross, actually."

"No," Itachi said, his throat dry. They had killed these three people by strangulation; the only stench from the corpses was that of their recently voided bowels. "I meant how does someone become... important."

She stared at him in total astonishment. "... Dunno," she said. "Why, you interested in going undercover? Gotta be black ops to go undercover."

That wasn't useful, either: he looked askance at his other teammate, an Uchiha. The man winked at him, and continued to go through the hitmen's shabby personal effects. (His name was Shisui and they had been on six C-rank missions together. This was their first time on an A-rank mission in the same cell. Itachi recalled none of those things; he would look up their mission records later. He did not keep teammates for very long.)

"Guess you could always ask T&I," the woman concluded, grinning.

"Don't be gross, Mitarashi-kun," the second said, and Itachi filed the name away. "Hey, you know, Itachi, if you want advice on, uh, girls, I could give you a talk? Show you around town?"

"Yeah, Shisui-kun, that makes sense. Don't ask the _girl_, ask the pervert."

From the man's facial expression, tone of voice, and body language - actually, he was more of a teenager - Itachi deduced that Shisui was attempting to be friendly.

Fine, it was decided: Shisui would do.

"Sure. That sounds like fun," Itachi told Shisui, the word unfamiliar in his mouth. A utilitarian sort of disdain rippled through him as he watched Shisui blink and gape, a mild flush rising to his face. Itachi wondered how many times he had personally dismissed Shisui's attempts at camaraderie, and then decided he did not care.

Sasuke seemed crushed when Itachi told him he would be spending time with Shisui instead of teaching Sasuke to fly a kite. Itachi nearly wavered - for a moment. Then his resolve strengthened, and he began his self-assigned mission to grow fond of Uchiha Shisui and then kill him.

(It never occurred to Itachi that killing Shisui might present any difficulties. Feigning a suicide would be easy enough for a ninja of his caliber; and after all, who would suspect him?)

Love is widely touted as being capable of altering the course of events, but nothing wraps its coils through history like human hatred. Itachi believed - or at least dutifully parroted - the former, and paid far too little mind to the latter; for an insensate automaton like Itachi did not hate, and could not understand the hatred of others. Perhaps if he had been fuelled by spite from the beginning, Itachi might have been devious enough to survive.

It was a fact of nature that even the worst laid plans tended to go well for a short while; and then, depending on the weight of the miscalculation, countless lives would be irrevocably changed for the worse when they swerved awry. Itachi's casual selection of Shisui was not such an event, but it was the sort of choice that seemed ghoulishly ironic through the historian's omniscient eyes.

Itachi had no way of knowing that Shisui worshipped him. He did not understand admiration, either.

* * *

A week after extending the invitation, Shisui took him to a small teahouse that could have been accurately described as "cozy" - Itachi found it stifling and in violation of several fire codes, and made a scrupulous mental note to inform whatever cousin of his was in charge of Konoha's zoning laws. It had a lacquered wooden floor the color of muddy ashes - the grain was fine, visible even through the veneer, and the heels of their military-issue sandals clunked against it heavily.

Shisui gracefully allowed him to take the seat with his back to the wall. "You want tea, or something?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Itachi said, creating an awkward pause.

Shisui seemed to be desperately fishing for something polite to say; Itachi felt he had waited long enough, and allowed a soft smile to curl into existence, gently bending the bow of his lips. (He had practiced it in the usual way, and copied it.) "I would like coffee, if they serve it?"

Although their cell had been dissolved upon the completion of the assassination, Anko had, for reasons Itachi found suspiciously vague, chosen to help Itachi gain access to Torture and Interrogation's extensive libraries. Morino Ibiki had been amused by Itachi's research materials, and told him he was "a shoo-in for ANBU".

Itachi politely expressed his complete disagreement with the notion that anyone could be a 'shoo-in' for the black ops, and resumed his careful note-taking. By the end of the cramming session, and having opened three separate forbidden scrolls, Itachi felt he had a newfound understanding of interpersonal politics and how to inculcate positive regard.

The scrolls cautioned against the use of the more in-depth techniques, which it claimed should only be attempted by shinobi who had cleared a battery of psych tests and intended to become long-term sleeper agents; Itachi ignored these warnings. He was quite confident in his own brain; he had never worn a mask before, and did not yet fully understand their potency.

The ploy worked - Shisui's face was more open now, bathed in the petty relief of having breached a small hurdle to Itachi's heart. It would make no difference to Shisui whether Itachi's inner sanctum was real or fabricated - what was important was that Shisui should be made to believe that he was being allowed into it.

"Yeah, they have a couple kinds, there's -"

"Whichever you prefer," Itachi interrupted, increasing the speed and the pitch of his voice with surgical precision, dropping his eyes in feigned shyness to the table. Shisui was not stupid, and he was a well-socialized child - he knew how to interpret the signs Itachi was feeding him. Gazing at Shisui's reflection on the back of his spoon, Itachi judged that Shisui was responding favorably, and that he had paused enough; he raised his eyes again. (He wished he knew how to force himself to blush - he would tackle that problem with a mirror and the Sharingan tonight.)

"Do you take yours with milk? Sugar?" Shisui pressed. He appeared to be elated - enthralled. Itachi allowed his fingers to fidget, and tucked a wisp of hair behind his ear.

"... I don't really like sweet things," Itachi demurred, feeding Shisui another lure to test his personality type.

"Hey, I won't tell anyone if you've got a sweet tooth," Shisui murmured back, his eyes softening, an idiotic grin tugging at his lips.

"... just a little sugar," Itachi breathed, doing his best to appear harmless and furtive, and Shisui's breath caught in his throat. (It was a complete lie; Itachi had never had coffee before today, and as a rule he loathed sweets.)

"R-right, sure," Shisui coughed. "So, about, uh, your girl problems -"

"I'm sorry for the pretense," Itachi said shortly, allowing his pose to evaporate before the apparent shift in his personality from "anhedonist" to "honey trap" could raise Shisui's subconscious alarm. "I didn't agree to this because I wanted advice on girls. I wanted to spend time with you."

Gratifyingly, Shisui blushed, soft brown eyes fixed on Itachi's finely scarred hands.

Itachi was a perfectionist; he wondered how normal people became close to one another, and concluded they must do so accidentally - and very sloppily. Shisui would at least have had the benefit of a properly orchestrated relationship when Itachi finally killed him.

The persona that Itachi had chosen to adopt was a modification of his basic temperament: he had added the merest brush of youthful uncertainty, a sliver here and there of "absentminded professor" clumsiness, the illusion of a secret loneliness. It was like adding touches of paint to a perfectly functional machine; it would serve, he judged, to make him more appealing to others.

The fact that he would only use it around Shisui would actually make it seem more genuine - as long as Shisui never discovered which was the mask and which the reality, Itachi's hold on him would be secure.

(Or so he thought. At that point in history, Shisui's _shunshin no jutsu _was a closely guarded secret.)

Itachi was, by nature, a quiet young man; he let Shisui ramble, and listened attentively, attempting to glean as many facts as he could about his cousin so that he might force himself to like them. He studied Shisui like a hunter studied their quarry - from an innate assumption of superiority, but with respect for that which he intended to destroy. To his mild surprise, there was plenty to approve of - even admire, if he had been the admiring type.

It was the first time Itachi had ever attached any particular meaning to killing, or to death in general: in his war-soaked world lives were smudged out of existence easily and without much fanfare. He almost looked forward to grief - like so many disillusioned geniuses, he thirsted for novelty.

" - so what do you do for fun?" Shisui ended, giving Itachi a curious look.

Mentally Itachi was forced to translate this question into something he could actually answer: what pursuits did he _enjoy_? "... I like to study jutsu, and train."

He would have added 'spend time with Sasuke' to that brief list, but he had already begun to wean himself of his attachment to his brother in preparation.

Shisui stared at him. "Seriously?" he pressed. "Have you ever been to the theater?"

"No," Itachi said.

"Been to a concert?"

"No," Itachi repeated, growing faintly annoyed. "It is not necessary to my career." That was a misstep - he could see a tendril of unease tightening Shisui's jaw, a seed of suspicion. (If Itachi did nothing that was not necessary to his career, why was he here, having coffee with Shisui?) "... are those things fun?" he asked, stirring his coffee, and the distrust in Shisui's narrowed eyes retreated.

"You're kinda bad at the whole 'rebellious teenager' thing, aren't you," he said, laughing a little. Itachi bit his lower lip in thought.

"... Why would I rebel?" he asked - it was a genuine question. "What is there to rebel against?" The only great force Itachi considered himself at odds with was Madara.

Shisui's lips tightened into a thin, unhappy line. "... Everything," he muttered, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheekbones as he blinked away the phantoms of his imagination.

He blew against his coffee, and sipped it in pensive silence.

Following this cue, and pondering Shisui's strange answer, Itachi dutifully sipped at his own. It was rich and bitter, he found - the sugar stuck to his teeth and throat in an unpleasant, filmy sort of way, but it was good. "... I like it." This, too, came as something of a surprise: the notion that he could enjoy the unnecessary.

"Then we can add going out for coffee to your list," Shisui said, smiling at him again. "Next time - we'll do something _you_ like next, all right? Like spend the day training. It'd be badass if I could say I trained with you."

Itachi felt something warm tugging at his chest - no doubt the heat of the brown coffee, as it slid into his stomach, and the pleasure of a job well done. "... That's not why you should want to train with me," he said, letting the soft smile bend his mouth again. "Saturday?"

"Sure, I'm free," Shisui agreed.

"Will six in the morning be too late?"

"... in the _morning?_"

The verbal repartee flowed smoothly after that, and Itachi returned home with a quiet sense of satisfaction written in the set of his shoulders. He did not know the difference between enthusiastic friendship and romantic attachment. His poverty of emotional experience had left him startlingly naive in this respect - and perhaps it was his naïveté in that slim sphere that allowed his murderous intent to slip beneath the radar of a trained killer like his cousin.

* * *

Their relationship progressed in ticket stubs and splinters, coffee mugs, scuffed shoes, long walks by the Nakano; sweat stains, grass stains, an oddly juvenile, oddly normal sort of young male roughhousing; a cataloguing of lengthy conversations that led to a shared - and intimate - cascade of references that only the two of them understood.

The springs was new leaves, new flowers, the air sweet and thick with promises. Saplings bled color and exploded into the gardens of Konoha; were weeded out with gentle care, and the earth was fresh and cool beneath bare teenage skin where it had been turned. Shisui grew taller, and then Itachi grew taller - measuring their heights against each other, quiet laughter in Shisui's glances and sober dedication to the god _Duty _in Itachi's long hours peering over scrolls, searching for higher and higher techniques.

They made a good team, working well as a fluid unit - Shisui gave Itachi's crows names, and fed them stale breadcrumbs while Sasuke - eyes red with suppressed tears - watched from behind shuttered windows.

"Make friends your own age," Itachi told him, flatly, whenever Sasuke fumbled to breach the distance that Itachi enforced.

"But I want to spend time with _you_," Sasuke would cry, in a temper, and Itachi would tear himself away, into Shisui's distraction, before he could feel anything.

He still hated sweets, but he had grown fond of sugar in his coffee, if only because of the subtle softening of Shisui's hard amusement when Itachi drank it. He still kept an appropriate distance in order to maintain the purity of his focus - he met with Shisui when it was strategic for him to do so, and at his own convenience. For a brief while into their acquaintance, Shisui would date girls - but this tapered off, and Itachi assumed that he had ensnared Shisui's attentions. This was a good thing - no lover would be left behind to search for meaning in Shisui's death.

Things were going well - they trained their bodies and eyes against one another, strengthening the hypnotic force of their genjutsu. Itachi learned the way Shisui moved with scrupulous attention to detail, daydreaming of a thousand ways to kill him. Today was a training day - they had a habit of sharing their more inventive illusions - and Shisui was in a quiet, secretive mood.

He stared deeply into Itachi's eyes as they sat with their knees touching in a corner of the teahouse. A fly crawled over the shoji screen on the opposite side, casting a vaguely sinister shadow over his face, and Itachi wondered when he was going to get to the point, what the illusion would be this time. It never came.

"What are you doing?" he asked, flatly, when he had had enough.

"... nothing," Shisui murmured, a little twinge of disappointment flickering through his face. He blinked, and his Sharingan melted back into the familiar brown of his eyes. "Guess I just wanted to memorize your face."

Itachi thought that that was completely unnecessary. "How sweet," he said, spitting his over-enunciated words like acid.

"You're kind of an asshole sometimes," Shisui said, grinning at him cruelly. "It's not cute at all."

Itachi's spine stiffened. "I don't aim to be cute," he murmured, watching his coffee grow cold in its slightly cracked cup. "I am to be useful."

"You _are_ useful, to Konoha," Shisui said. His affect was curiously flat. "And to the clan."

Itachi glared at him, then, feeling the faint stirrings of rage. "And to you?"

"Fuck," Shisui muttered. "You don't even _know_ what you are to me."

"I thought... I had assumed we were friends," Itachi said, wondering if this would jeopardize his plans - but hatred was another sort of importance, he could nurture ugly resentment like a wound if Shisui broke things off, and then killing him would still serve its purpose.

"... Maybe that's not enough," Shisui said, obliquely.

"What are you talking about?"

With no interlude, Shisui kissed him.

Itachi thought about it, and then found he didn't mind. In fact, he almost enjoyed it - the awkward press.

"... that," Shisui said, simply, retreating a shade and breathing gently against Itachi's mouth. His hands, Itachi noticed, were clenched over his knees, but he could not read the expression on his face.

"... I can give you that," Itachi said, softly. He would take Shisui's life - if Shisui wanted a few kisses, a heated embrace in the moonlight, to be _closer_ than before, it could only make him more important, could it not? And it was a low price for a death.

Shisui was blushing, like he did when he was drunk. "Okay," he whispered, and ran a hand through Itachi's immaculate hair. "Not... not right now."

"But when you want this," Itachi agreed. He realized, to his surprise, that he was smiling. "It's yours to have." (After all, who else would he give such things to?) And Shisui smiled, but remained quiet and secretive for the rest of the week.

It was impossible to say how many times Shisui might have used his mind-reading jutsu on Itachi before that particular day, but many years later, when Itachi recalled that rainy afternoon, Shisui's scalded tongue, the smells of the teahouse - he realized that that was the _precise _moment in which Shisui discovered that Itachi intended to murder him.

At the time, Itachi sensed that some quality of their relationship had changed, but did not know why, and, with the arrogance typical of youth, assumed that it was due to his romantic influence over Shisui's moods.

* * *

Their sexual liaisons were not as awkward as they might have been; they were familiar with each other's bodies, each other's minds and ideologies.

It was summer; the training grounds were almost empty. Shisui's harsh panting seemed unnaturally loud, and oddly desperate; Itachi was silent, save for a single, soft gasp. After the fuss was over they sat, side-by-side, until the sun rose, simply breathing the same air.

"Got my mask today," Shisui said, suddenly. "I get my tattoo next week."

Itachi blinked, drowsily, and smiled at him. "You too?"

"ANBU fraternization policies are pretty strict," Shisui said, frowning at the ground. He looked Itachi in the eyes - brown-black. "I've grown kinda infamous for the Shunshin."

"It's a brilliant technique," Itachi said, admiring the way Shisui's chin jutted over his high collar, the way the sunlight made his tousled hair seem almost auburn. He felt the pride of ownership - that such a deadly, superb creature should be his.

"Hey, Itachi..."

"Yes?"

"... no, it's nothing," Shisui said, shaking his head. "I won't see you again until Saturday."

Itachi nodded; they kissed lazily, eyes shut, and then Shisui pressed a hand to his cheek, and then Shisui was gone.

He did not see Shisui again until the following Wednesday - the hospital alerted Fugaku that Shisui's condition was stable. The mission had gone horribly awry, and Shisui had appeared on the border of Konoha with smashed fingers, a shattered femur, and a collapsed lung.

* * *

The hospital smelled of disinfectant, sickness, helplessness. Itachi watched Shisui breathe with a tube down his throat, unconscious beneath the wires, and realized that he was terrified that Shisui would die - that he did not _want_ Shisui to die.

When the invalid woke - his achingly pretty eyelashes fluttering against too-sharp cheekbones - he blinked at Itachi, and his eyes softened. _Wouldn't die without you_, he traced into Itachi's shaking palm, and then ran his fingers through Itachi's hair until he faded back into his chemical sleep.

... Madara was perched on the windowsill. "You haven't achieved the Mangekyou yet," he uttered, and Itachi's skin crawled. "What an inconvenience."

His mask, when Itachi saw it reflected against Shisui's hitae-ate, was an ominous spiral. "Give me a little while."

"Perhaps I'll make the clan my puppet again," the evil thing mused, a little flicker of chakra crackling about his feet as he shifted. Itachi thought of the jutsu he had prepared and knew they would be as effective as throwing stones at a tsunami. "Perhaps I'll dash them to pieces against the bottom of the sea. I have a long memory, you know - I don't forgive."

And what could Itachi do? "You don't need to ruin the clan," he said, softly, gently smoothing the wrinkles from Shisui's brow with his thumb. "You only needed to ruin me."

Madara laughed. It was a hideous noise, echoed in the ears like the din of a mad creature - but when Itachi turned to face him, he was already gone.

* * *

Three months later winter was on its way, frosting the ground in the mornings. Itachi had worn the comfort of frequent use into his ANBU uniform. He had also memorized the hideously complex patterns for _Amaterasu_ and _Izanagi_, having found their scrolls buried in the musty old complex beneath the Uchiha shrine. He was waiting for the time when he would have the chakra - the eyes - to use them; after reading them, he blew a careful flame over them, and let them turn to ash.

Sasuke was growing old enough to hate him for his neglect - but it was better this way, Itachi reasoned.

"- restoration of our glory, the dignity of our blood -" he heard around corners, whispered under the breath of his clansmen. He did not attend the meetings; and that was why the death sentence, delivered to him by the eldest Council Elder in the flesh, was a surprise.

By mutual agreement, he and Shisui did not discuss politics, but Itachi knew - through instinct, through the web of delicately woven intimacy - that Shisui had nothing to do with the plot. Shisui's rebellion was against the whole world, against all authorities - he toed Konoha's party line only just well enough to avoid getting in trouble, and brought Itachi flowers, and was no traitor.

There were plenty of perfectly innocent people who would die.

But Konoha had always stamped her heel down mercilessly on her wayward children; and Madara had come to him the night before he received the order. "If you don't want me to stamp the clan out," he'd told Itachi, his voice like nails on slate, "you'd better hurry and kill them yourself. You can do it - you're capable of anything, aren't you?"

Itachi had been silent, and Madara's mask seemed to leer at him.

"After all, you even fucked Shisui."

(Itachi's shoulders had trembled, a little, when he'd absorbed the impact of those words.)

"... Better kill him quickly, while the spell lasts. Oh, you and I are clever bastards," Madara had laughed, delighted. "If I were you - but I can see why you didn't want to dirty your hands. A pathetic little thing like your brother has no business carrying the blood of kings."

(Itachi was so very sick of hearing about the Uchiha bloodline.)

"Sasuke will live," Itachi had said, his voice drained of all feeling.

"No one else," Madara had promised, carelessly tossing Itachi that bone as though it were totally inconsequential. "When you're done with this little chore, you'll come to me - your little birds will know the way - you aren't done, yet."

* * *

With gallows in his heart Itachi asked Shisui to meet him by the banks of the Nakano's tributary - the Nehanagawa, which wound so secretively through the woods and would provide a private setting for the intimate murder. Dutifully, Shisui showed his face five minutes past the appointed time, teleporting into the clearing with the unbearable, awkward grace of a black-white-lovely heron.

(Itachi had thought it would be best to get Shisui over with first.)

"I'm sorry," Itachi murmured, his sword drawn, his whole body curiously taut. Shisui stared at the blade and then began to laugh, a sickness wracking his lungs.

"Shit, Itachi," he said, shaking his pretty head in the moonlight.

"... You aren't surprised," Itachi realized, blood chilled. His wrists shook. "You - you used it on me, didn't you?"

Shisui smiled at him, eyes hooded with pain. "You really are a bastard, you know?" he whispered, smiling, and gripped the bare blade with his open fist. His blood, as it dripped down his arm, was thick and black. "Of course I did."

Itachi hadn't prepared for Shisui _knowing_.

" - Kill me with your bare hands, all right?" Shisui breathed. "I won't fight."

"Why not?" Despair and confusion cracked Itachi's voice. He let the katana drop, blade pointed at the ground. The trees were bare, but it was not cold enough for the waters to have frozen, yet.

"... If you have to ask, you rotten little motherfucker," Shisui said - he had always had a cruel, almost vindictive streak - "you wouldn't understand anyway."

And that was all it took, really, for Itachi to lunge forward in grief and rage and press his thumbs deeply into Shisui's throat, knocking him back into the brackish waters, watching him choke and twist and scream for air under the weight of a terrible, unforgiving destiny.

It only took ten minutes for Shisui to die, but Itachi knelt there in the water on his torso, holding him under - holding him - for three, infinite long hours.

With a snap his eyes began to burn - his body ached like his chakra paths were being wedged wider with blunt chisels - a bomb going off, somewhere in his heart, that took away the numbing pain and drowned him in a rush of hideous power -

And nothing mattered at all, anymore.

He had succeeded.

But it did not matter.

* * *

The bloodbath was easy, after that.

The sky, when he could stand to look at it, was a constant and unrelenting red.

He heard Sasuke screaming, felt himself murmur the interdiction - _come to kill me someday, little brother._

And then he left Konoha, drifting along with no more feeling than a ghost.

The crows swam in his vision. "Welcome," Madara told him, rubbing his hands together, "to the Akatsuki, little descendant. You and I have work to do."

(The pain was too vast to be felt. The thought _Sasuke will live_ echoed in Itachi's skull; eyes shut, he stared like a glass doll into a relentless cacophony of black.)

"I don't care," Itachi said, and Madara laughed, and told him that there was really nothing to care about, in the end.

* * *

It was only after Sasuke came to kill him and succeeded, as he lingered on the border between life and death, a finger pressed to his little brother's delicately curved forehead - it was only then, years too late for it to do any good, that the thought occurred to Itachi that he must have loved Shisui after all, and Shisui him. There were... yes, there were certain parallels.

It was natural to die for Sasuke's sake - bittersweet, but entirely natural, and he had waited for it for a long, long time.

* * *

In Sasuke's first school report after the massacre, he had to draw up a tactical map of Konoha and label it; sitting alone in his empty house, he took out a dictionary, and looked up the name-kanji.

He did the rivers last, and discovered, with a mild sense of faint surprise, that the intensely convoluted _Nehanagawa_ was not written '_seed flower'_, as he had assumed - as Itachi had taught him - but instead written with the characters for _'twisted story'_.

* * *

end.

A/n: Heavily, _heavily_ based on Sylvia Plath's 'Poem For A Birthday - The Stones'; header quote is taken from that poem. Originally written for the bitter_nakano winter advent calendar over on lj. Concrit (always) welcome!


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